off the clock
by dilemmas
Summary: "JJ, listening is in my job description," she smirks, "but I'm always happy to do it off the clock for a friend." [two conversations between alex and JJ, set either side of season nine's "in the blood" - mentions of suicide, doyle saga]


**a/n: just an un-beta'd quickie because i decided to write down my roz-headcanon =^.^=**

* * *

It was over, finally. This was a spree killer that hit far, far too close to home. He, the UnSub, Robert Clarke-Evans, had murdered twelve people in the two weeks after his daughter's funeral.

Olivia was eighteen, a senior, hopefully going into pre-med. Three days before the SAT scores were released she'd downed the better part of a bottle of Xanax with the dregs of the painkillers she'd been given for a fractured wrist the year before.

She'd scored a 2140.

So, Alex sought out JJ.

She's in the roundtable room, coffee, case files, stationary, and a muesli bar spread over a third of the table. She's writing on the legal pad, head down, wisps of hair from her haphazard bun obscuring her vision, when Alex finds her. She stands in the doorway for a moment before JJ notices her and gives her a faint smile, setting down her pen and pushing away her work. She sighs, and goes to speak before stopping herself, swallowing the lump in her throat.

Alex moves to sit next to her, pulling out the chair a fraction and trails her hand down JJ's shoulder and bicep as she sits. She waits a moment, takes in JJ; her chewed up nails, shining eyes, messy bun, her face almost rubbed clean of make up.

"She wanted to be a doctor." She sighs.

Olivia had been blonde, petite, a delicate beauty. There was no denying the similarities between her and JJ, and how Alex had pictured her sister, but this was almost cruel.

"I remember… I was just a kid but it was '85… Live Aid, and she had her radio on all day, and I was in her room with her… I was drawing, or colouring, I think, and she was telling me how all these people were putting on this concert because this country…" Her voice is almost dreamy, like she's quoting her sister's words verbatim, "far, far away was starving, they didn't have any food, and they were trying to raise money to help them… and then maybe a few months later she said to my parents that she wanted to be a doctor, that there were these doctors that worked in Africa and Cambodia and… and she wanted to do that: to help people."

She smiles, barely a hint of melancholy, and Alex can't help but smile along with her. She still can't seem to talk about Danny without tearing up, and yet here's JJ, losing her sister at _eleven_, and she's able to speak about her with such clarity and joy.

"And she was _so smart_, she was taking out every book from the library not long after she told our parents." She lets out a small laugh before continuing, "I was her… you know those skeletons in biology classrooms?" Alex nods. "She'd ask me to point to a bone,"

JJ's eyes sparkle and she looks so young, like, younger than she really is and it's astonishing.

"She'd bought, _bought_ with her own money, some of those kids' books about bones and muscles and all that so I'd know what she was talking about." She's animated now, smiling completely, talking with her hands.

"So I'd point to a bone and, like, I'd point to my kneecap and she'd tell me it was a patella. She'd teach me as she read and I remember, not long before…" She swallows, eyes welling up just a bit, but then she smiles, _beams_.

"I pointed to my hip, to the bit that sticks out, and all she says is _pelvis_, and I go, _no, this bit_," she jabs at it excitedly.

(God she must have been a fun little sister. Scotty was the _worst_ at that age. He'd busted her over a pack of cigarettes when she was fifteen and she's still pissed at him.)

"And she couldn't remember and she goes, _wait, you know what it is?_ and I was so excited because I knew it was the iliac crest, and she was smiling like nothing else, like… she was proud of me."

JJ sniffs but her smile never fades.

"And the only reason I remembered was because she said the pelvis, the iliac, looked like a butterfly."

—

The next time JJ and Alex speak like this is not long after Penelope's altar on Halloween.

Emily had sent Penelope a picture of Sergio sleeping on his back, paws outstretched, tummy begging to be scratched, and she hadn't stopped gushing over it. At the end of the day she'd been telling the story of how while he was in her care, Sergio had not only pulled down the blue-green-shell curtain in her apartment, but ended up greeting Penelope hopelessly tangled in it, leaving it so beyond repair that she'd had to purchase a new, thankfully identical one. He'd learned his lesson.

Only Alex and JJ are left in the bullpen that evening and they're both feigning work. James is in Boston and Will and Henry are down in New Orleans for his cousin's birthday.

She rolls over to Alex's desk, smiling at the Union Jack travel mug sitting on her desk and it's a moment before she speaks.

"Paris—at Halloween the little Eiffel Tower wasn't for Roz, and… thank you for not saying anything."

For a moment, Alex considers playing dumb, but she is, honestly, curious to see where she's going with this.

"You know about… Emily, how she…" Alex nods, "I… we… when she was out of the hospital, Interpol took us to Paris, she stayed there until it was necessary and I… left her there, we had a meet where I gave her passports and… all that…"

She places her clasped hands on Alex's desk, and she immediately covers them with one of hers. JJ's voice is uneven and she can't quite fix her gaze on anything and Alex can't imagine what she, what they had all gone through.

"The rest of the team, they don't know. I mean, they know I knew she was alive, but all that—how involved I was, I can't tell them."

She breathes, deep, heavy and calming. Alex waits, she's a listener by nature and profession and can guess what's coming. It took Scotty over a year to truly accept their mother's death, and the way JJ's talking about all this, facts over feelings, was the way Scotty had with everyone that first year.

"I—I never did the bureau-mandated therapy because I wasn't in the bureau and I never really…" She takes a shaky breath, "she coded in the ambulance… and everyone's had a chance to work through it, and I'm just trying to do it without—to—to mourn, I guess, without dragging everyone else into it."

She sniffs, tries a watery smile and puts a hand over Alex's.

"Thank you, for… I mean you've taken on my sister—twice—and now—"

"JJ, listening is in my job description," she smirks, "but I'm always happy to do it off the clock for a friend."

JJ smiles, fully and radiant.

"You know what, I'm gonna grab a drink. You in?"

Alex pretends to think for a moment, before huffing a sigh.

"It's friday, might as well give the bartender a break."


End file.
